Katharine Mehrling

Katharine Mehrling lives in Berlin, where she has won the Golden Curtain audience award six times as the city’s most popular actress, for performances in productions including Arizona Lady, Ball at the Savoy and My Fair Lady at the Komische Oper Berlin. She was also awarded the Berlin Bear (BZ Culture Prize) in 2016.

She studied acting and musical theatre at the London Studio Centre and at the Lee Strasberg Theatre & Film Institute in New York. She made her stage debut in London’s West End, at the Old Vic Theatre as Chrissy in Hair, going on to take the title and leading roles in Irma la Douce, Piaf, Cabaret, End of the rainbow (Judy Garland), Kiss me Kate, The Threepenny Opera, Tell me on a Sunday, Next to normal, Funny Girl and Evita at Vienna’s Ronacher Theater. She created the role of Tippi Hedren in the musical The Birds of Alfred Hitchcock by William Ward Murta, written especially for her.

She also appeared in the Hollywood movie Valkyrie.

Her love of jazz and French chanson is reflected in her live performances and on several CDs, including Hommages, Bonsoir Katharine, Piaf au Bar, Mehrling au Bar, Vive la vie, In love with Judy and Am Rande der Nacht (At the edge of the night), which she wrote with jazz legend Rolf Kühn.

Since their collaboration on Paul Abraham’s jazz operetta Ball at the Savoy, Katharine Mehrling and Barrie Kosky have enjoyed a special artistic friendship. Their collaboration Lonely House, premiered in December 2019 at the Komische Oper Berlin, focuses on Kurt Weill’s exile in Paris and New York. At the Edinburgh Internationalen Festival 2021 Mehrling & Kosky performed two concerts with their Kurt Weill evening LONELY HOUSE, which received 5-star reviews in the British press.

In 2022 Katharine Mehrling represents the Kurt Weill Festival in Dessau as Artist in Residence.